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For a Change, They Came to Praise Her

Michael Appleton for The New York TimesSupporters of the city transportation commissioner gathered outside City Hall.

There is no question that the policies of the city’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, can be polarizing.

Over the last few years, the city has created hundreds of miles of bicycle lanes, established rapid-transit bus routes in Manhattan and the Bronx, and banned automobiles from part of Times Square. In doing so, Ms. Sadik-Khan has been criticized by some for being insensitive to concerns of drivers, business owners and some community members.

But on Wednesday, the other side of the spectrum was heard from, as about two dozen people gathered on the steps of City Hall to thank city officials — including Ms. Sadik-Khan — for changes that they said improved life for pedestrians, bicyclists and people using public transportation.

“New pedestrian plazas, 250 miles of bike lanes and dedicated select bus service routes have shown that streets are public spaces that must serve everybody in New York City,” said Julia De Martini Day, an organizer for the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. “The community demands that these changes continue to grow.”

The event was organized by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a coalition of environmental organizations, transportation advocacy groups and urban planning groups. The executive director of the campaign, Kate Slevin, said that the event was planned three months ago without any involvement from the Department of Transportation or the city and was not meant as a response to recent criticism of Ms. Sadik-Khan.

Several speakers thanked the transportation commissioner by name, but they also thanked Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith for changes that they said have made the streets of New York City more pleasant and safer.

For instance, information handed out at the event said that there were 269 traffic fatalities in 2010, down from close to 400 in 2001.

“Commissioner Sadik-Khan and Mayor Bloomberg deserve credit for making city streets safer, whether you are in a car, walking, riding a bike or taking the bus,” Ms. Slevin said after the event.

Some of the commissioner’s supporters suggested that Ms. Sadik-Khan’s critics were members of a vocal minority who had not yet recognized the value of the initiatives the city had instituted during her tenure.

“The Bloomberg administration’s many steps to improve transportation have made the city safer, more livable and so much more enjoyable for so many New Yorkers,” said Richard Kassel, senior lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “When a small number of very loud voices are shouting to turn back the clock, it’s worth remembering it how much safer it is to walk around the city today.”

Ms. Sadik-Khan was not at the news conference; she was in Washington to give a keynote address at an event run by the League of American Bicyclists.

Lets not get carried away crediting Sadik-Khan for the drop in traffic fatalities. They’ve been dropping since 2001. Sadik-Khan became DOT commissioner in 2007. Fatalities actually *rose* a bit after she took over and then resumed their 10 year decline.

This article neglects to mention that Sadik-Khan was a board member of the TSTC for the two years prior to her appointment as DOT Commissioner, and that the current DOT policy director, Jon Orcutt, was formerly executive director of the TSTC.

While I appreciate what she did to Times Square and Herald Square, she was directly responsible for the infestation of scofflaw bicyclists that we are experiencing. The streets belong neither to scofflaw drivers nor do the streets AND sidewalks belong to scofflaw bicyclists. And it is a message that she has utterly failed to get across during her tenure so far.

As head of DOT, she has been MIA on requiring bicyclists to register, get licensed and insured just as she has been MIA in declaring a snow emergency – In fact, any snow emergency this year.

The only word association I can come up with every time her name is mentioned is “garbage”.

Janette Sadist Khan, aided and abetted by Mayor Mike, MTA-Jay, and even a little by NYPD-Ray, seem to think NYC is the next Bicycle-nation, and showing NO respect for people who use mass transit – buses in particular — and still believe that banning buses on Broadway from 57th Street to 8th Street is a good thing.

I have lived in NYC – in Queens & Manhattan — for 49 of my 60 years, and have never seen the kind of bus-torture we are being subjected to in the past 3 years because of more bike lanes, less buses and more people who need bus service. Favoring the few bike riders over the masses who need decent bus service is no tribute to JSK, JW and Mayor Mike.

If I can’t drive in the bike lane then if there is a bike lane available I don’t expect to see any bikes weaving in and out of traffic right????

Come on if bikes get a special lane then enforce a policy of leaving the rest of the road to cars, trucks and buses…

Bikes don’t slow down traffic they cause accidents and also nearly run over peds trying to cross the street when the biker is in the process of running another of the many red lights he/she runs all day every day they ride. Bikes and cars do not mix keep the bikers in the bike lanes only.

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